The present disclosure relates to improving the integrity of a computer system including a plurality of user accounts.
Nowadays, most businesses heavily rely on computer systems for underpinning the business. Such computer systems typically are used by many users, e.g. employees, having their own user accounts on the system. Such user accounts may for instance contain files owned by the particular user.
The pool of users and associated user accounts typically is a dynamic pool. People may leave a business, which typically triggers the deletion of the user account of the user from the computer system of the business they have left. However, this can compromise the integrity of the computer system. It is not unusual that files or other digital content owned by a particular user are also being used by different users of the computer system when performing their tasks. Therefore, the deletion of such digital content can compromise the integrity of the computer system in the sense that the system is no longer capable to implement the desired business processes, e.g. services, due to the deletion of digital content that is being relied upon by existing users.
Often, it is practically infeasible for a system administrator to evaluate the relevance of a user account to the overall computer systems as such an exercise would be prohibitively time-consuming, especially if the departed user has large volumes of digital content in his account. A partial solution is being provided by US 2012/0259849 A1, which discloses a method for determining the accurate ownership of a file within a data system by identifying a first plurality of access events for a file, wherein the file is associated with a directory of related files, identifying a second plurality of access events for the related files within the directory, wherein access events in the first and second plurality of access events occur within a period, determining a pool of users accessing files within the directory within the period and selecting a user from the pool of users as an inferred owner of the file based on access metrics related to the plurality of access events. However, there still exists a need for more robust protection of the integrity of such computer systems.